Study shows crashes reduced at red-light camera intersections

Red-light cameras have been controversial little devices in Texas, with state legislators pushing to phase them out of existence back in 2009. They didn’t succeed, but then, last fall, Houston voters approved a referendum to deactivate the city’s red-light system. A federal judge eventually nullified the vote and ordered the city to turn the cameras back on.

Amid all the hubub, Texas Transportation Institute researchers were studying if the cameras were actually effective. On Monday, TTI released its report, which says the number of vehicle crashes decreased at intersections where red-light cameras were installed.

Researchers looked at 11,122 crash records, generated from incidents that occurred at one of 275 “monitored controlled intersections” around the state. They looked at the crash rate before the cameras were in place and for the three years after the devices went up.

Unfortunately, the study doesn’t include the only Bexar County city with red-light cameras in place: Balcones Heights, whose city council members approved installing the cameras in 2007. According to TTI Associate Research Scientist Troy Walden, Balcones Heights did not submit their crash data to the Texas Department of Transportation, so the suburban city was removed from the red-light study.

Here’s the gist of what researchers did find: overall, crashes dropped by 6 percent the first year after the signals were installed at the various intersections. They dropped by 18 percent the second year, and by 4 percent the third year.

In general, all crash-types dropped at the intersections, despite the road type, except for one: rear-end collisions went up by signficant percentages at red-light camera intersections on all but one type of roadway.

Walden explained those increases this way: first, rear-end crashes make up only 2 or 3 percent of the total number of crashes at red-light intersections, so any increase in the actual number of collisions means the percentage increase looks more extreme. Also, most of these crashes were drivers who hit the car in front of them because they weren’t controlling their speed or weren’t paying attention to the road.